Chhattisgarh seeks expansion of banking services

Chhattisgarh government has stressed the implementation of Business Correspondent Model to expand banking services to the rural and semi-urban areas of the state.

"Majority of the state's unbanked areas are in the rural and semi urban centres and the banks need to provide banking services in these areas by the Business Correspondent Model as opening a branch may be a difficult and time taking proposition," state's chief secretary P Joy Oommen said.

Oommen was addressing the 37th Meeting of the State Level Bankers Committee, Chhattisgarh, here. He appreciated the efforts of the banks in providing credit to the priority sector in general and agriculture sector in particular.

The state government has asked departments to ensure payments to the beneficiaries of various programmes through Banks. This will have the twin advantage of increasing the reach of the banking sector and will also lead to engaging the Business Correspondents, Oommen added.

Apart from Principal Secretary (Finance) Ajay Singh, Principal Secretary (Agriculture) D S Mishra, Secretary (Urban Development) Jawahar Srivastava, Industry Secretary P Ramesh Kumar, Commissioner (MG NREGA) K Subramaniam, General Manager, Reserve Bank of India Arvind Sharma, Chief General Manager, NABARD T Maharana, Amitabh Khandelwal and others attended the meet.

The Convener, State Level Bankers' Committee and DGM State Bank of India, P Ramesh Babu, informed that the priority sector advances grew from Rs 9785.77 crore as on December 31, 2008 to Rs 13268.17 crore as on December 31, 2009.

The net incremental credit of Rs 3482.40 crore represents a 35.59 per cent growth on Year-on-Year (YoY) basis. Agriculture sector advances grew from Rs 4048.27 crore as on December 31, 2008 to Rs 6601.14 crore as on December 31, 2009, registering a growth of Rs 2552.87 crore in absolute terms and 63.06 per cent on YoY basis. This is a healthy sign, Ramesh Babu added.